Editor's note: This season the Hood by Air collection will be presented in three parts. Each is reviewed separately below.

Part 1, New York, September 7, 2014

Best to address the elephant in the room. What was up with those Plexi stockade chokers at today's Hood by Air show? Given the recent events in Ferguson, Mo., it was hard not to read a political critique into these accessories, which manacled several models' hands up by their heads. Hard, but not impossible, because if you know HBA honcho Shayne Oliver even a little, you know he's more interested in self-expression as a means of challenging norms than he is in conventional forms of protest. Institutional oppression isn't his thing. So it wasn't a total surprise that Oliver pointed to the chokers in his show—and the gussied-up crutches—as part of a commentary on the breakdown of machismo. A key theme of this show, he explained, was an interrogation of what it means to be a man. Hence the deconstructed blazers and fatigues, the riff on the three-piece suit, the very on-trend and very appealing reinterpretations of traditional shirting, for both girls and boys. And for people who refuse to identify with any one particular gender. This was a Hood by Air show, after all.